Children's Museum becomes Smithsonian affiliate

Feb. 7, 2014

Emery Glenn, 4, and her brother Camden, 2, paint at The Children's Museum of the Upstate on Thursday, February 6, 2014. / Heidi Heilbrunn/Staff

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The most well recognized name in museums is making its debut in Greenville.

The Children’s Museum of the Upstate has been named a Smithsonian Affiliate, becoming the only children’s museum in the nation to partner with the 168-year-old institution that guards a large swath of cultural and historical heritage.

The Affiliations program includes more than 180 museums nationwide, including two others in South Carolina — the South Carolina State Museum in Columbia and York County Cultural and Heritage Museums.

The connection means the Greenville museum will be able to offer more-in depth content in science, technology, engineering and mathematics through collaborations with other institutions, said Nancy Halverson, Children’s Museum president and CEO.

Teacher education is a focus of Halverson’s, and the Smithsonian connection will open more doors and provide more resources to reach teachers and help them with some of the things the museum already does well — childhood development, “informal teaching” and experiential learning.

“The Children’s Museum will be partnering with Clemson University and Greenville County Schools to start a brand-new professional development program for teachers,” Halverson said at a special event Thursday night to make the Smithsonian announcement.

Suzanne Rosenblith, associate professor and chair with Clemson’s Eugene T. Moore School of Education, said pairing formal education with experiences like those offered by the museum can have a real impact on teachers and students.

“It is no secret that the problems facing public education today are profound, but the answers are also here,” she said.

The Smithsonian name also means a new level of gravitas for the Children’s Museum.

“It tells the school district, it tells the university, it tells all those people who are gathered around the table setting policy that what we are doing is viable, important and valued at a national level,” Halverson said.

“The world of museums is changing so much, and this next generation coming up is looking for something different, is looking for something that is more interactive, more hands-on.”

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Partnering with children’s and science museums, the largest-growing segment among museums, allows traditional institutions to embrace a new way of thinking and find ways to reach new audiences, said Harold Closter, Smithsonian Affiliations director, who was on hand at the event to make the announcement.

“The biggest issues in the museum world right now are how people learn and especially addressing the learning styles and educational needs of children because we know that’s our future audience,” he said.

Halverson quipped that the partnership is a “good dating service” that can help the Children’s Museum connect with museums around the country.

For example, Halverson said she wants to do more in the field of aeronautics at the museum. So she called up the Affiliations office and asked to be connected to the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Ala., another Affiliate institution.

“If I had called down there on my own and said, ‘Hey, I have this little children’s museum in Greenville, S.C.,’ she’d be going, ‘So?’” Halverson said.

Now she’s working on a collaboration that she hopes will expose Greenville, its students and its teachers to experts from that center.

The Affiliations program was conceived in 1996 as a way for the Smithsonian Institution to share artifacts, lending objects from its massive collection to museums across the country for display.

“We have understood that in order to be more accessible to more museums, we have to look not just for those who are interested in collections but those who are interested in working with us on educational collaborations,” Closter said.

The connection between the 4-year-old Children’s Museum and the Smithsonian is the fortuitous consequence of a seemingly bad day.

Two representatives from Smithsonian Affiliations were attending the Southeastern Museums Conference in Greenville two years ago.

A missed flight had them arriving after the opening reception had been held at the Children’s Museum. The two attendees, one of them a woman named Caroline Mah, called the museum and asked for a tour.

Halverson, who then served as senior vice president for museum advancement, spent more than two hours walking around the museum and touting its role in the community.

“You could tell they were really interested in the way that we talked about our work, versus what they were used to hearing from history museums and art museums,” Halverson said. “She (Mah) planted a seed with me then.”

That seed germinated a few months later when Halverson was appointed to the top role at the museum and began the process that would lead to Thursday’s announcement.

Though the affiliation doesn’t provide funding, it may create new opportunities to increase the museum’s current $2.1 million operating budget through grants, Halverson said.